The present invention relates generally to display control apparatus for causing a display device to display character string information, and more particularly to display control to be performed in displaying a list of names of data files of music piece data sets on an electronic music apparatus, such as an electronic musical instrument.
The present invention also relates to file or folder management apparatus equipped with a function for automatically assigning a name to a file or folder to be newly created, and more particularly to an automatic file name assigning function to be performed in creating a data file of music piece data in an electronic music apparatus, such as an electronic musical instrument.
Heretofore, there have been known electronic music apparatus, such as electronic musical instruments, which are equipped with a display device for displaying various pieces of information. In many cases, the display device is provided on the upper surface of a panel of the apparatus body and has a relatively small screen size. Thus, a display area capable of displaying various information on the display device is limited to a relatively small range. Therefore, when character strings indicative of file names, music piece names (or titles), accompaniment style names, tone color names, etc. are to be displayed on the display device, and if the entire character string can not be displayed because the length (or necessary display width) of the character string is larger than the limited display area, it has been conventional to delete or omit part of the character string to display the remaining part of the character string.
For example, some of the conventionally-known electronic music apparatus, capable of reproducing music data sets in predetermined order of a playlist that defines reproducing order of a plurality of music pieces, are arranged to cause a display device to display the playlist including character strings indicative of names or titles of music piece data sets registered in the playlist and paths of the individual music piece data sets (i.e., character string indicative of respective storage locations of the files of the music piece data sets). In this list, a region for displaying the paths is limited to a narrow display area so that the whole of the path-indicating character string can not be displayed, and thus, it has been conventional to omit a character string portion at a leading end portion of the path and display only a predetermined number of characters from the trailing end of the path (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Publication No. 2006-196058, which will hereinafter be referred to as Patent Literature 1).
However, in the case where the partly-omitted display style with only the predetermined number of characters from the trailing end of the character string as disclosed in Patent Literature 1 is employed, and if a character string portion necessary for data identification is included in the omitted leading-end character string portion, there may arise the possibility that it is difficult to distinguish between and identify individual data from the displayed character string portion. It has also been conventional to omit a character string portion of the trailing end portion of the path and display only a predetermined number of characters from the leading end of the path; in this case too, if a character string portion necessary for data identification is included in the omitted trailing-end character string portion, there may arise the possibility that it is difficult to distinguish between and identify individual data from the displayed character string portion. Namely, whether the character string portion necessary for data identification should be on the leading end side or on the trailing end side depends on the case, and thus, with the partly-omitted display style where a leading-end character string portion or trailing-end character string portion is displayed with the other part omitted from the list as in the conventionally-known technique, there would arise the inconvenience that it is difficult to distinguish between and identify individual data on the basis of the character strings indicated in the playlist.
Further, in the field of electronic music apparatus, such as electronic musical instruments, there have been known techniques where a predetermined system automatically assigns a name to a file to be newly created. In an apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Publication No. 2004-157260 (hereinafter referred to as Patent Literature 2), for example, a file name comprising a predetermined letter string (e.g., “Song”) and number “n” is automatically assigned to a file to be newly created at the time of audio data recording. Then, once other audio data are recorded overlappingly (i.e., overdubbed) onto the file having the automatically assigned name, a backup file of the original file is automatically created, and another file name is created by adding another predetermined letter string “Bn” to the end of the original file name. Here, the number “n” included in the files is a positive integer number, and a file name having a number indicative of file creation order (“Song1”, “Song2”, . . . ) is automatically created each time an audio data set is newly recorded, and a file name (“Song1_B1”, “Song2_B2”, . . . ) having a number indicative of backup generation order is automatically assigned to the backup file of file name “Song1”. Such a naming scheme is advantageous in that putting the word “song” in a character string portion of each automatically assigned file name can indicate that the file has data pertaining to a music piece, and in that the creation order and backup generation order of each file can be known intuitively from the number portion.
Typically, when newly creating a file, an electronic music apparatus of the aforementioned type follows an operational sequence as briefed below. First, in response to a new file creation instruction, an empty file automatically assigned a file name is created, and then data (audio data, MIDI performance data or the like) to be recorded are written into the empty file. Then, if necessary, the user can change the automatically assigned name of the file, having the audio data written therein, to another desired name. Namely, according to such an operational sequence, the newly created file is temporarily stored under the automatically assigned name.
The newly created file is stored into a storage medium provided in the electronic music apparatus. When a specific file is to be read out from among a plurality of files stored in the storage medium, it is common to display a list of all of the stored files on a display device and prompt the user to find the specific or desired file from the displayed list. In the list, the individual files are sorted by file name (or in order of the file names), so that the user can find a desired file in accordance with the order in which the files are sorted (or arranged). The sorting order of the files follows a predetermined sort rule that defines order relationship among a multiplicity of characters (alphabetical letters, Japanese syllabary characters (Kana), Chinese characters, numerals, marks, etc.) usable as file names. The sort rule defines the order relationship, for example, in accordance with the alphabetical order, order of Japanese syllabary, small-large relationship among the numerals or the like.
Further, in the displayed list, the files are arranged, in the sorting order according to the predetermined rule, without the files with the automatically assigned names and the files with the user-assigned names being discriminated from each other. Furthermore, the conventional automatic name assigning function does not create file names taking the sorting order into account. Therefore, as the quantity of the files stored in the apparatus becomes great, a newly created file (having an automatically assigned file name) would be buried in the great quantity of the files so that it may become difficult to find where in the list the newly created file is located. Namely, the conventionally-known technique would present the inconvenience that, as the quantity of files stored in the apparatus becomes great, it tends to be difficult to find a newly created file.